The canal Xerxes I attempted to cut across the Athos peninsula was the Xerxes Canal.
Xerxes ordered the canal before his invasion of Greece in 480 BCE. It crossed the narrow neck of the Athos peninsula in northern Greece, allowing Persian ships to avoid rounding the dangerous promontory. Ancient accounts describe a large naval undertaking connected with preparations for the invasion.
For centuries, some writers suspected that the canal was merely a literary invention. Modern surveys and geological evidence, however, have identified traces of the channel and supported the broad historical account. The waterway was probably used by the Persian fleet during the invasion, although it was not intended as a permanent commercial canal.
The project is often confused with Darius I’s canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea, which was in Egypt and served a different strategic purpose.